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ARIS BPA vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Blueworks Live
Sponsored
Ranking in Business Process Design
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ARIS BPA
Ranking in Business Process Design
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (4th)
BiZZdesign HoriZZon
Ranking in Business Process Design
13th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.5%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ARIS BPA is 8.6%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

AjarMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease
IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.
Libor Černý - PeerSpot reviewer
I can usually find an answer to my issue on ARIS Community
From the start, there were some difficulties on how to create outputs since there wasn't a repository tool in version 6. However, in version 7, there has been a tool for creating standards for a company, and that tool has been very intuitive. While I have been using this tool for several years, other people just starting to use it find the learning curve steep. This tool is very robust and accommodates many roles, where people can participate from compliance, IT designers, etc. This can create problems for users who have no experience with similar tools. It took me a year before I felt comfortable with this tool, because when I came from university it was the first or second tool that I worked on. It took me a year to run every feature or use it for every possibility since this tool is very robust. We sometimes have to create the link to the server and the repository twice because it is deleted once for some unknown reason. Though, this is not a big problem. There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports.
Venkat Raju Mallipudi - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to implement, and it's reliable but restrictions in integration capabilities
Integration definitely needs improvement. There are some restrictions. We've seen that it doesn't integrate with everything we might expect. Out of ten products we want to integrate, maybe five or six integrate easily. The other four might face challenges due to lower investment in the products or compatibility issues. It's definitely not easy to achieve seamless integration for any product. We can only test to a certain extent, and issues could arise from either BiZZdesign HoriZZon or the other product. Another point is the cost of licenses. If they were a bit lower, it would be easier for businesses to acquire more licenses... something like an enterprise or bulk license model. Maybe different pricing tiers based on the number of licenses, like significant discounts for orders over one hundred. This could help clients adopt the product.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has a built-in capability to capture process owners and managers against processes along with other process governance roles."
"It has the ability to document in different formats. It is not tied to a specific model. You can look at it from different angles and see the intuitive nature of it. It always generates a valid diagram. You cannot create something that is not BPMN compliant."
"It is a stable solution since there has not been any downtime. Everything loads fast."
"Business users understand it really well, which means we can then help them automate their business processes."
"The licenses are transferrable between different users."
"Valuable features include real-time modeling and design work, the ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool, and getting instant output."
"Collaboration is most valuable. You can collaborate online with many people. People can comment, and you can comment back. It is just like a social network, and that, for me, is very good."
"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."
"ARIS has a good collaboration function. You create a portal where any authorized users can work on the models. There are simple flows for making and approving changes."
"Visualizes processes which helps the business see pain points."
"ARIS is probably the most mature product in terms of modeling an enterprise architecture so that it has context."
"Object oriented modeling allows us to trace what's going on with the specified object."
"It has the ability to scale up, as well as integrate with other systems within the organization to get real-time information from dashboards and reports."
"Aris BPA has a lot of tools that are more professional than Bizagi."
"​The matrix model makes building relations easier.​"
"We also have relationships specified with our IT systems and our organizational chart. That makes it possible to analyze things from the systems point of view and regarding the organizational part of the company. It all comes together in one tool and that is what gives us the most value at the moment."
"The feature I find most valuable is that the start times and loading times are short. It takes only a few seconds to load the repository and whenever I want to open diagrams, they are there almost immediately."
"t's a good tool. My colleagues that are making use of it for application, business processes, or data modeling, are very satisfied with it. They find it easy to use. The graphical representation is simple but therefore efficient, so I know that they are planning a very good commencement on the use of these tools."
"I used BiZZdesign HoriZZon at two organizations. At Manchester Metropolitan University, I used it with a small team for architectural modeling of the student record system. We modeled teams, process objects, and their interactions with applications. We also used it to model a gradual rollout with plateaus showing migration over time. At the BBC, I used it to model software services for publishing content online. I showed key model views to senior stakeholders using Horizon, allowing them to modify and score applications and services."
"I like the flexibility of the modeling part for standards like ArchiMate and, at the same time, BPMN. It allows us to connect elements from different areas and to have a single repository and a single source of truth. It gives us one place to do analysis throughout the organization."
"The powerful editing function in teamwork project-based, common or shared modeling, based on a powerful repository and knowledge sharing in a portal are the most valuable features. These are the most important features for me. I can add the integration of individual modeling notations like Archimate plus BPMN and DMN, and so on. We travel from one location to another and the tool allows us to keep track."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"The most valuable features are the application, portfolio, data, architectures, and modeling things."
"The most valuable feature is that it allows you to work with different methods, using the same tool."
 

Cons

"IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts."
"Spaces are not well organized; space controls are lacking."
"The initial setup is neither straightforward nor complex however you do need to know what you are doing."
"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."
"There should be an option to import from and export to Microsoft Visio. Being able to move files back and forth between Blueworks Live and Visio would be good."
"We would like the ability to add additional custom colors. We would like to color additional items to add notes to the blueprint."
"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."
"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."
"The areas of ARIS where we see room for improvement are actually related to the background services that support it. Over the last number of years, Software AG has moved from an on-premises solution into deploying a SaaS solution to their enterprise base. That has been really successful from my point of view, as I have been a customer of ARIS, managing the relationship, for a couple years. Certain support functions around the knowledge base, customer service, and the cross and upselling of modules within the core ARIS component are lagging behind the SaaS movement."
"Integration with third-party tools should be improved (e.g. based on APIs)."
"One of the biggest challenges is to realistically enable the defined structures of the processes that you have in ARIS documented, and then actually implement them in the business."
"I had a hard time with ARIS's access and licensing policy. It requires you to pay for each step you want to take forward with the solution."
"One of the issues is, when you are defining databases, the way they use entities and relationship diagrams, the way we can define data, like data models, there is still a part they could improve."
"User interface (UI)."
"The governance mechanism could be better, as could automation."
"I use it strictly for developing the business process model. I don't use it for the actual automation. I do that with Vtenext. I have standardized on Vtenext, and I don't use ARIS BPM anymore. The Vtenext UI is just as good, and it is much more tightly coupled to the underlying object model. I can get more done in one session with Vtenext rather than first going to ARIS BPM, then importing, and having to edit it for tight coupling."
"We tested it, and we had support from BiZZdesign, including patches, but it just didn't do what we wanted."
"I have seen table charts where, if the chart is a little too big, it does not fit in HoriZZon and it is not at all visible... There have been several times where we could not publish a chart properly and we had to break the chart into small tables and create multiple artifacts, creating a complete mess. This should be seriously taken up by BiZZdesign because there is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of usability. It's not at all good, unfortunately."
"It lacks capabilities with regard to infrastructure modeling."
"There could be simpler modelling."
"It should be more open to integrating with other existing tools. Although there has been progress in the past."
"There's room for improvement. When I finished using it over a year ago, I discussed implementing C4 notation with BiZZdesign HoriZZon.They've likely done this now, but I haven't seen it. Setting up interactive views for stakeholders to score services was a bit difficult."
"The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult."
"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
"The solution is very, very cost-effective."
"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."
"ARIS enables you to start small and grow the use of the solution over time, although it's quite expensive. So if you want to start small, it's quite an investment for a small company."
"Negotiate. Price is high so make sure you’re getting the best deal."
"ARIS Express​ is free."
"​It is on the higher side."
"The setup cost and pricing depend on the license (Modeler, Viewer, Administrator)."
"Pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"From my point of view, no, it is not cheap, but it is not too expensive because you get this big organization behind it, technical support, and all those things. It's not so expensive to use. It's a Rolls Royce in this field, I know that. Even for small organizations, they can get so much effect from using this tool, in a very fast way, so the money will be back in the customer's pocket very fast."
"Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay."
"We were customers and bought licenses from them. We used their remote instance initially but upgraded to the on-device version due to lag. For pricing, we paid about 2200 pounds a year per seat for the client installation at an educational rate. I'm not sure about commercial rates. I managed to get a free copy at BBC since it was for evaluation purposes."
"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."
"The price is reasonable."
"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."
"[The] Orbus... pricing model was based on every single functionality having a price. The pricing was comparable but if we wanted to scale, it would have ended up being a lot more expensive. BiZZdesign gave us one price with all of the functionality, and we could scale as much as we needed."
"The pricing model is slightly on the high side and could be more competitive for long-term partnerships."
"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.
What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?
Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use...
What do you like most about ARIS BPA?
The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?
Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay.
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
Improvement should be made as per customer requirements.
What do you like most about BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
This is one of the best tools, especially because of its collaborative nature. Anyone using it can access previous pr...
What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult. We don't use the chart ...
What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
I use the solution in my company for all sorts of things, like enterprise and solution architecture. As part of our d...
 

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint
ARIS, ARIS BPM
HoriZZon
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council
Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS BPA vs. BiZZdesign HoriZZon and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,095 professionals have used our research since 2012.